The Australian media is full of
reports that the local arm of German-headquartered supermarket giant Aldi has been selling removable hard drives complete with a pre-installed virus.
Aldi joins an extensive list of companies which have managed similar snafus in the past, including IBM (pre-infected USB keys, given away at a security conference, no less), Olympus (pre-infected cameras),Samsung (pre-infected phones) and Best Buy (pre-infected digital picture frames).
Oh, and Aldi (pre-infected PCs). That's right - Aldi has done this before.
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Aldi has effected an immediate recall of the product from its shelves and has urged customers who have bought the product to return it. The chain says that the worm was found on a small number of the devices, and that it can be removed by fully formatting them.
SCMagazine Australia reports that AusCERT has also advised a full format of the device for those who won't be returning it to the store and to scan their computer with an up-to-date AV solution. Since Conficker is an old threat, the majority of commercial AV solution contain the signature for spotting it.
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